An unaccountable belief in zombies - the living dead - as well as belief in all kinds of witchcraft, is widespread (and, note, not without reason!) Widespread in Haiti, Tahiti and all the islands of the West Indies without exception. So much so that the poorest peasants, without hesitation, pay a lot of money for heavy stone slabs to lay them on the graves of relatives. This is so that the corpses cannot be stolen by the evil sorcerers-bokors, who, as it is believed, with the help of special manipulations turn them into half-dead, that is, zombies, and then removed to the most remote areas, where they are exploited as slaves or killers … Although zombies can eat, breathe and move, they cannot think, do not know who they are, and generally have no memory …
All this sounds like a scary story at night, but there are hundreds of real cases of zombies, and this has been going on for a very long time. For example, in 1989 a police officer met a zombie woman who, ignoring him, wandered mindlessly through the village. He recognized her as Natagetta Joseph, who died in 1973 at the age of 43; he himself participated in the drafting of the death certificate. (We will explain this case below.)
But one of the most famous zombie stories is that of Clairview Narcissus, the only zombie to star on TV. Sometime in 1982, Angelina Narcisse was shopping at the market in her village when a voice whispered in her ear the childhood nickname of her long-dead brother Clairview. He died of fever 18 years ago at the A. Schweitzer Hospital in Deschappel and was buried the next day in the local cemetery.
Angelina understood that only family members could know her brother's nickname, and they called them by nicknames only in childhood! She was in utter amazement when she heard him. But it is impossible to convey the extent of her shock when she turned to see the speaker! Swaying on unsteady legs, with dim eyes, stood behind her … Claireview!
No wonder she immediately fainted! Recovering, she firmly declared that this was indeed her brother, who was considered dead. His identity has also been confirmed by family members and more than 200 villagers. This extraordinary story attracted such media interest that even a British BBC television crew came to film about it. But the most important thing was that this zombie, unlike all known previous ones, was mobile, with normal speech, and could tell how he became a zombie and what happened to him next.
It turned out that he had quarreled with his brother over the land, and he paid the bokor so that the sorcerer zombified Clairview. Bokor gave the "ordered" an unknown poison, which first caused fever-like symptoms, and then plunged him into a trance, outwardly indistinguishable from death. At the same time, Clairview was fully conscious, but was completely paralyzed. His skin was waxy-pale, and his heart barely beat. Two doctors examined him and pronounced him dead, and Clairview was buried alive!
After a while, still paralyzed, Bokor dug him out of the grave, gave him another potion that allowed him to move slowly, but made it impossible to think, after which Bokor sent his victim to southern Haiti, where Clairview was a slave for several years and worked with other zombies, constantly oppressed by the bokor master. He would never have escaped from captivity, but one day another zombie suddenly awoke enough to attack the bokor and kill him. With the death of the sorcerer, the use of drugs ended and their effects gradually faded away. Clairview began to remember who he was and what had happened. During the years that followed, he wandered everywhere; learning that his brother was dead, he returned to L'Ester, where he met his sister Angelina at the market.
This amazing story made a huge impression on the American biologist Wade Davis, and he decided to find out exactly what drugs are used for zombies: those that cause paralysis, restore the ability to move, "wash" the brain of the victims whom the bokor chose for his purposes.
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Visiting Haiti, researching the matter and obtaining samples of the substance, Davis discovered that the temporarily paralyzing poison contains two very interesting components. One of them is tetrodoxin, a powerful substance that affects the nervous system and causes rapid, deep paralysis. It is obtained from a special rare species of fish found in those places, extremely poisonous. Another ingredient has a powerful analgesic and hallucinogenic effect; this substance is secreted by the cutaneous glands of the highly venomous reed toad Bufo Marinus. The scientist told about his amazing discoveries in the book "The Snake and the Rainbow".
As for the revitalizing and mind-controlling potion, it turned out to be Datura, a plant locally called the "zombie cucumber." Among the symptoms it causes - hallucinations, chaos in thoughts, lack of orientation and complete numbness - are typical signs of zombification, However, it was clear that something else is involved in the zombie process besides the listed substances, because, even if they stop receiving them, zombies rarely return to a normal state; their consciousness remains oppressed until the arrival of real death.
Davis suggested the following; if the paralyzed, buried alive victims before being zombified remain in the coffins underground for quite a long time, they experience oxygen starvation, which leads to irreversible brain damage, which intensifies the manifestation of the psychotropic effect of Datura. The reason Clairview's consciousness cleared up when Datura stopped is evidently because he didn't stay in the coffin long enough for oxygen starvation to reach critical levels.
Dealing with the problem, Davis along the way made another important discovery. Zombies may not have been the innocent victims of the evil boor. Zombies most often became those people who themselves were the cause of troubles, and as a result incurred trouble in the form of the anger of relatives or the envy of neighbors who paid bokor, wanting to severely punish the offender.
“Zombies can literally be called the living dead,” says Dr. Davis.
- Judge for yourself: to be paralyzed with the help of a witch's potion, to be considered dead, to lie in a coffin alive, to be resurrected by the will of a sorcerer and after that to be a slave for many years, deprived of consciousness, will and memory, if this is not worse than death, if it is not life of a dead man, then what is it ?!
“Interesting newspaper. Psi-factor No. 2 2012